Posts Tagged ‘hanging basket’

When double flowered petunias first arrived on the scene a hundred years ago hardly anyone grew them. They looked wonderful but were so easily damaged by rain and storms that they had to be grown in conservatories. Not only that, but they were tall and straggly and often fell over, pot and all. Not any more.

Now, new double-flowered petunias are being developed in many places around the world but it’s in a little village outside Cambridge that the finest double petunias are created. This year sees the launch of the latest, and it’s one that’s especially dramatic.

‘Tumbelina Crazy Ripple’ has all the great features of the many other colours in the Tumbelina Series. These include neat, semi-trailing growth with none of those long straggly trails that get in the way as you pass by; a long and prolific season of flowers, right up till the frosts; neat, weather resistant fully double flowers. And then there’s the colour.

The unique colouring is pale lime green splashed with burgundy purple and although no two flowers are quite the same, they all come in this same dramatic blend of colours.

Mr Fothergill’s is delighted to introduce a new concept for patio gardeners which will help save our customers time and enable you to create fantastic floral displays. The Speedplanter is a quick and easy solution for hanging basket and container planting to create attractive displays in just 3 weeks!

The company’s Emilia Merola comments, “The Speedplanter is a totally new concept and is perfect for gardeners who are short on time or don’t have the growing space but still want to achieve beautiful and co-ordinated patio containers and hanging baskets which will last through the summer.”

Each Speedplanter unit measures just under 30cm in diameter and approximately 8cm in height, and will arrive ready for immediate placing into a hanging basket or container. Available as themed collections, each planter comes with slow release fertiliser already included and is set with 7 individually chosen plants, which will root through the bottom of the planter, and then grow harmoniously together throughout the summer months and last well into early autumn.

Emilia comments “The idea is simple but so effective. Sales have been really encouraging so far, so we’ve increased the amount of units on order in anticipation of strong interest from our customers.”

Mr Fothergill’s is offering six colour themed Speedplanter collections, three suitable for hanging baskets and three more ideal for containers. All are priced at £16.95 each and will be delivered from late May 2019, head on over to mr-fothergills.co.uk to order.

There are two kinds of Ipomoea. There’s the familiar ‘Heavenly Blue’, one of the loveliest of all climbers – of all flowering plants, in fact – but there’s also another type: the sweet potato.

Sweet potatoes have always been on the margins here in Britain, they need hotter summers than we’ve had here until recently but we can now grow them and they can crop well. But we can also grow ornamental sweet potatoes, varieties with a dramatically coloured foliage. Two of these are available this year.

These are not vigorous climbers, these are bushy semi-trailing or ground cover varieties that are superb in large hanging baskets, in large tubs or tumbling over the edges of raised beds. And it’s not for their flowers that we grow them but for their coloured foliage.

Both make dense growth, very effective ground cover in sunny sites – and they do like sun, whether grown in beds or containers. They like regular watering too and, when happy, ‘Sweet Caroline Purple’ may well produce a few pink-eyed white flowers though they’re usually hidden by the leaves.

Whether sweet potatoes as summer foliage plants is a new idea to you or not – they’re well worth a try.